Final Report Summary - TRANSPLANT (Regulation of transposable elements in plants and impact on genome evolution)
The objective of the project was the study the impact of MITEs in the regulation of nearby genes and to analyse their possible role as genome organiser elements. To this end, the project proposed to start applying dedicated bioinformatic tools to complete the Arabidopsis MITE landscape, and to analyse the epigenetic marks associated to these elements. In a second stage the project proposed to analyse their influence on the expression of neighbouring genes as well as to analyse the possible role of selected MITE families as genome organisers.
During these first months, and as planned in the project, we have concentrated the efforts in developing bioinformatics tools and using these tools to refine the annotation of MITEs in the genome of Arabidopsis, as well as in starting to analyse the epigenetic marks associated to these transposable elements. In the upcoming weeks, we will start analysing by bisulfite sequencing the level of methylation associated to selected MITEs in order to confirm the bioinformatics data that we have collected until now.
During these first months, and as planned in the project, we have concentrated the efforts in developing bioinformatics tools and using these tools to refine the annotation of MITEs in the genome of Arabidopsis, as well as in starting to analyse the epigenetic marks associated to these transposable elements. In the upcoming weeks, we will start analysing by bisulfite sequencing the level of methylation associated to selected MITEs in order to confirm the bioinformatics data that we have collected until now.